I confess that my Bradbury exposure to date has been relatively little. I tried to read Fahrenheit 450 in high school, and never succeeded in finishing it. It’s now sat on my shelf for too long for me to pause in front of it, when I’m looking for something new to read, and think “Oh, I should give that another go.” Reading this story certainly piques my interest to go back and revisit Bradbury.

The theme of abandoned places is at the fore of this story. There are no characters, except for one lonesome dog who is too pathetic to be a true agent, there is only place, the place to which the soft rains will come, a place that used to be full of people but which is now empty and forsaken.

It’s not often that an inanimate object can successfully be the protagonist in a story, but Bradbury makes it work here.